Motivated Refugees and IDPs Build Careers

Refugees and
internally displaced persons (IDPs) in Serbia will have new career opportunities thanks to a 200,000 euro European Union grant.
6,077 This is
the number of empowering, sustainable jobs that a SPARK-led coalition aims to create over the next five years. The effort will be spearheaded by the United Entrepreneurship Coalition (SPARK and BiD Network), and will concentrate on Kosovo, the Palestinian Territories, Liberia, Burundi and Rwanda.
Awarded in 2010 to Business Start-up Center Kragujevac and Group 484 – a prominent Serbian NGO from Belgrade collaborating with the BSC – the EU funding is focused on vocational trainings.
Nearly 200 participants, most of whom are poor and unemployed, have worked closely with professionals to build skills as manicure and pedicure specialists, gerontology assistants, greenhouse workers, classical parquet floor and thermo facade installers, window and timber door manufacturers and installers, and forklift drivers. Participants also attended trainings in business management and computer skills.
Collaboration between BSC Kragujevac and Group 484 is continuing into 2011. They are currently in the second phase of the project – awarding the top 20 business plans with grants of up to 1,200 euro in value, along with expert consultancy services.

The coalition will offer training and coaching to local partner organisations in the areas of management, business skills and political advocacy, working to strengthen their capacity to support entrepreneurship and regional development of Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs).

Underway since 1 January 2011, the programme is intended to give young entrepreneurs knowledge and guidance to head-start their own success and at the same time contribute to local economic growth and the well-being of their own countries.

SPARK-Established
BSCs
Now Self-Sustainable

SPARK supported five Business Start-up Centres (BSCs) in Southeast Europe over the last five years. Now these centres are supporting themselves – developing new projects, and offering commercial services. BSCs in Montenegro, Bosnia and
Herzegovina, Serbia, Macedonia and Kosovo have relied on the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs for
20-year-old Ali Rahmani knows how to make things grow. Raised in a family of eight on a small farm in rural Kosovo, Rahmani now studies economics at the AAB-Riinvest University in Pristina. When he heard a radio advertisement for a free 10-week training at the Business Start-up Center Kosovo (BSCK) (BSCK) in January 2010, he jumped at the opportunity.
Rahmani’s winning proposal addressed the needs of neighbors who must travel far from town to buy flowers and vegetable plants; the BSCawarded loans helped him build a greenhouse of pepper and tomato plants on half a hectare of family land in Drenas. The BSC training taught Rahmani much of what he would learn through his University programme, but faster. One year into his farm project, titled EuroBona, radio publicity and word of mouth are attracting more and more customers, and Rhamani already has plans for expansion. The busy April season supported eight employees, and moved an average of 1,000 plants a day. Each employee has a family, Rhamani explains, and the more greenhouses he builds, the more workers he can employ, and the more he can help invigorate Kosovo’s economy. Besides his enthusiasm for working in the soil, Rhamani is encouraged by the profit. “You can’t be a millionaire,” he said. “But you can win something.”
primary financial support for the past five years. But each of the BSCs has since been awarded new funding from outside donors, and earned revenue from their own commercial activities, which will float operations through 2011, and in the case of BSCs Bitola and Kosovo, for the next two to three years.

The five BSCs will continue to support Start-ups and existing SMEs throughout SEE.

Results of BSC SEE projects over the last four years.
  Universities began introducing Bachelors’ and Masters’ Degrees in Entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurial
events and trainings gathered hundreds of regional participants. A survey of 500 businesses in Kosovo was commissioned, whose results will feed private sector development (PSD) in Southeast Europe, which has come to an end.
 
The project directly contributed to strengthening regional cooperation by encouraging partners (universities, business alliances and associations, SME agencies) to create networks, share experience and knowledge, and work together through
joint initiatives. This web of cooperation offers a basis for sustainable development into the future.
Partner activities that are focused on establishing a self-sustainable Southeast European Association of SME Agencies have been extended through 31 July 2011.
Spring has come to Mitrovica, bringing new beginnings to the International Business College (IBCM). SPARK appointed a new Interim Director, George Peterson, who began his four-month term on 1 May, and a new IBCM Director, Daniel Klee, set to begin in August.

IBCM has entered its third semester of teaching since doors opened in March 2010 – with growing numbers of teachers, staff and students. An active promotional campaign for the start of the next school year is already in full swing.

[Read the latest IBCM newsletter here]
“A little bit of competition, a little bit of jokes and laughs, interesting topics, persons without prejudices and you get a priceless energy in the air and motivation to develop and share your ideas with others.”
24-year-old Milena Popin, a student of Marketing in Novi Sad, Serbia was describing her experience at the annual Mitrovica Winter University (MWU), held for the fifth time from 21 January to 4 February 2011, at the University in North Mitrovica.
Organised by the local University and its Student Parliament, with assistance from local partner NGOs and SPARK, the goal of MWU is to assemble a diverse group of local and international students and professors to foster a rich, collaborative learning experience.

Local professors and academics from North America, Western Europe, Russia and Serbia gathered in January to teach courses to 137 students from more than 15 countries on Cultural Heritage, Slavic Studies,Diplomacy and Communication, European Integration and the Western Balkans, Marketing in the Digital Age and Sustainable
Architecture this year. The two weeks were filled with classes, debates, guest lectures on the EU

and globalisation, discussions, movie night, dancing and excursions to monastaries, castles and a factory.

The challenge of the programme lies in its dynamic surroundings - due to local tensions, this year’s session was postponed from Summer to Winter.

“The constantly turbulent environment always made the school challenging to organise,” remarks SPARK Director Yannick du Pont, “But we have increasingly noted that after all these years, it has become a true tradition of the city and the university.”
MWU awarded 118 certificates this year, and students earned three to four ECTS credits each, transferable to higher level degrees across Europe.
[read more about MWU at www.spark-online.org]
SPARK NEWSLETTER Summer 2011